Peggy was only 15 years-old in 1974 when her first baby, Toney Allen Duvall, was born. Her newborn son appeared beautiful and healthy and no one suspected that anything was wrong until they noticed that little Allen didn't cry when they stuck him with the needles for his blood test. He didn't seem to notice the pain at all. Still, no one seemed to know just what was wrong. "They didn't really talk to me about it," recalls Peggy. She just knows that her son was sent to Grady Hospital in Atlanta for tests and she was not able to take him home until a week later.
The baby was in the hospital for a month and still no one seemed to know just what was wrong or how to help him. "It was really rough. Allen still couldn't eat and he would get dehydrated. The doctors told us different things and everywhere we turned nobody seemed to want to help." Finally, a doctor told Peggy that Al had a birth defect as a result of the Rubella virus that she had contracted when she was pregnant. He told her that she would not be able to care for her baby and that she would need to find a facility that would care for him.
When he was two years old, Allen was moved to the Georgia Retardation Center in Chamblee (the name of the facility was later changed to Brook Run). "In a way," remembers Peggy, "I was grateful that they were there – but I think he could have been better taken care of." In fact, Al experienced a number of very serious injuries while he was a child in Brook Run.
"They said he used to sit in his crib and hit his head on the wall," Peggy says, 'because nobody was paying any attention to him – and it didn't hurt (because Al did not feel pain like other children), so he didn't stop." Allen's face was so damaged by repeated impact with the wall that he would need reconstructive surgery to rebuild his nose.
After Brook Run closed, Allen went to live in a group home. Today, Al (as he is known by his friends) is 35 years old and lives and works in his own community. "I live in a normal setting now," he says, "I have a regular job." Al would like everyone to see him as just a regular guy, but his nineteen years at Brook Run left him with a lot of scars and bad memories. Still, he's a positive person and he tries to think about the good things including his Mom and the rest of his family. Al understands better than anyone how important it is to have a family that cares about you.
Al knows about flashbacks. "I get scared sometimes, I have nightmares that I do something wrong and they send me back– but then I remember that Brook Run is closed and they can't send me back there." But Al understands that there are other facilities – hospitals and nursing homes – that still incarcerate children and adults and he will not allow Brook Run or any other institution to haunt him without fighting back.
Al knows now that his mother never wanted to be separated from him but they both still grieve about the time that they were forced to live apart. A childhood is something that cannot be replaced.